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Posts Tagged ‘Ways’

tinyurl.com Speaker/Speech Coach Dr. Bill Lampton tells you how to control your stage fright, in six easy steps.

Randy Taran: 10 Easy Ways to Be Happy Now: Exercising the Happiness Muscle
How can we develop that happiness muscle, and start pumping up our happiness? Here are 10 easy tips that can make a real difference.

Read more on The Huffington Post

Abracadabra Moments, the Opening Line You Should Never Use, and 10 More Ways to Sell Ideas
A good idea can only become great if you’ve got the skills to sell it. We asked Sam Harrison, a speaker and writer on creativity-related topics, for a how-to in this excerpt from his latest book IdeaSelling: Successfully Pitch Your Creative Ideas to Bosses, Clients and Other Decision Makers . 1. ” If they feel they birthed it, they can’t kill it .” David Schimmel touts this tenet at And Partners …

Read more on Fast Company Magazine

Ways to spice up the classroom
MATHS is often deemed a boring subject by many students, and this is because of the tedious tests and practice required. Perhaps teachers could replace some of the tests with more interesting maths quizzes and intellectual games.

Read more on AsiaOne

Dale Carnegie course offers better ways to communicate
A Dale Carnegie course designed to help business leaders learn the art of communication is arriving in Wahpeton March 24. Called “Communicate to Lead,” the session offers attendees ways to demonstrate more effective listening and persuasive speaking skills.

Read more on The Wahpeton Daily News

Gleecommerce: 10 ways to improve job satisfaction
Look, here’s the problem. Your company website is full of 101 design clichés . It features stock photography of businessmen shaking hands & sufficiently ethnically diverse people having fun. You talk about vertical integration and synergies.

Read more on e-Consultancy

I am often asked about the role of the CEO or leader of any organization in employee communication. My opinion is that no matter what the issue is, even if it is just business as usual, having a good communicator as a CEO is critical to impact the culture of an organization in a positive way.

Lets start with looking at some scenarios. These can include a merger or acquisition, an organizational crisis, announcement of annual financial results, corporate social responsibility or even trying to create a culture of innovation.

My contention is that no matter what the issue, here are 5 ways that your CEO can communicate with employees and achieve positive outcomes each time. Most of the methods listed below involve face to face dialogue to ensure the greatest engagement.

1. Staff Forums – Otherwise known as “Town Halls” these are opportunities for the CEO and Senior Management team to visit employees in all locations and address the real issues and concerns of staff as well as communicating the big picture. Employee communication tips include handing out cards to attendees so that the questions can be addressed after a break in proceedings, tailoring the presentation in part to the unique situation in the particular region the CEO is visiting and following up any issues that cannot be answered at the time.

2. Site Visits – These are an excellent employee communication tool for the CEO to find out specifically from the frontline exactly what the issues and concerns are of a particular region or department. The key is not only to spend time with the leadership team but also to sit with employees and find out what they are working on and inviting them to suggest innovative ways of doing things differently. CEOs’ rarely spend time communicating with employees and this is one way to break down perceptions and encourage two way communication.

3. Employee Achievement – Another way the CEO can communicate change is to support and encourage employees personally for their achievements. These maybe directly related to the issue at hand and by taking time out to recognize high achievers or change agents it sends a strong message to all employees that the CEO will reward those who support and are engaged in the change agenda.

4. Leaderships Forums – One of the smartest things an CEO can do during times of change is to communicate with his / her leadership team. I have always found that employee communication strategies need to be pitched at different levels and with different strategies to suit the role and expectations of the employees. When we think of change it is the leadership team that will drive it, from regional managers, state managers to frontline supervisors it is important that the CEO communicates face to face with the leadership team to be very clear about his or her expectation of them during times of change. One employee communication tip here is that face to face one on one meetings be held with the direct reports to the CEO and the next level down; it is a very powerful tool and has maximum impact.

5. CEO Blog – Finally where would we be if we did not mention some form of technology driven communication tool. A CEO blog is very effective if it is used to support and report on the transformation process whilst the employee engagement strategy is underway. For example the CEO has one on one meetings with the leadership team, he / she then reports in the Blog on the key messages and expectations. The CEO begins visits to each region and reports back on the Blog the key observations and achievements of employees and so on. Employee communication tools to inform are always a back up and support to the real communication taking place, the employee communication engagement strategies as listed in points 1 – 4 above.

The methods suggested above also achieve another goal often neglected in employee communication. As this is the opportunity for the CEO to find out what people at all levels of the organization really think about a particular issue, it will cause the CEO to think differently next time about the importance of employee communication and will ensure that change communication is addressed at the planning phase of any major organizational change.

If you are involved in employee communication then you already know that one of the most important aspects of employee communication today is measurement. But so much of that measurement is focused on whether employees access the tools organizations use to communicate with them. You know, questions such as do they read the newsletter, do they access the corporate blog, do they find the information sessions interesting. None of these questions prove that your employee communication tools measure engagement which is what every CEO wants to know. There is one key reason; you are measuring the acceptance of communication tools, not measuring employee communication strategy. So here’s what you do.

1. Every organization conducts market research surveys. These surveys typically measure customer satisfaction levels across services and products provided by your organization. Sometimes they even ask questions about competitor products and services. Organizations then take that information and work towards improving the rating they received by introducing improvements to services, products and information.

Now many organizations have a human resources department that usually conduct a staff survey annually. This survey typically includes questions about communication within the organization, understanding the corporate vision, satisfaction with employee benefits and training and so on. What I suggest is that organizations include a supplementary survey of just 10 questions at the end of this survey. And these questions should be framed by selecting key questions from the customer survey and asking staff what do you think customers think about X? These 10 questions in effect become your employee communication engagement measure.

2. Typically the result demonstrates disparity between what customers think and what employees think customers think. Once you have the difference measured between perception and reality then you have the opportunity to commence dialogue about with your employees about what customers really think. Most importantly it allows you to design employee communication strategies specifically to target that business issue. So now you have a business and know the key messages for your employee communication strategy.

3. One year on when the customer survey is conducted, you ask the same questions and again do the same with the staff survey. What you seek to find is that the measure of the perception staff have of what customers think and what customers actually think have moved closer together and towards the organizations desired outcome. This becomes your business measure of whether you have engaged employees.

4. This information is important because your ultimate aim in employee communication has to be to create the “Aha Moment”. The Aha Moment is based on information that challenges the employee’s belief about an aspect of the business. The information that suddenly helps employees say, “Now it makes sense”, “Now I understand”, “Now I can do something about it”. It is only once you see this gap close between what customers actually think about an issue and what employees think the customer thinks that you have a measure that demonstrates your employee communication engagement strategy has been successful. If the gap still exists then the design of your employee communication strategy is flawed in someway.

5. Finally, it is important that we measure employee communication tools such as readership of our staff magazine, access of our intranet and other tools. However the only way to impact perceptions of the value that the employee communication function contributes to an organization is to measure engagement strategies against business outcomes.

This approach to measurement is low cost. The investment in the human resources staff survey and the marketing departments’ customer research is already locked in. You are simply adding 10 questions to the end of the human resources survey based on the marketing questions. The engagement strategies are generally low cost because they involve people, not tools. By this I mean that employees are involved in doing something differently to bring about change in an organization. The staff newsletter and other information tools already exist, all you do is tailor the articles to reflect the main focus of your employee engagement strategy. This low cost yet highly effective approach will ensure that you can measure your employee communication strategies against business outcomes.

Nonverbal communication has been defined as communication without words. It includes apparent behaviors such as facial expressions, eyes, touching, and tone of voice, as well as less obvious messages such as dress, posture and spatial distance between two or more people.

Some major areas of nonverbal behaviors to explore are:

Eye contact Facial expressions Gestures Posture and body orientation Proximity Paralinguistics Humor

Eye contact:

Eye contact, an important channel of interpersonal communication, helps regulate the flow of communication. And it signals interest in others. Furthermore, eye contact with audiences increases the speaker’s credibility. Teachers who make eye contact open the flow of communication and convey interest, concern, warmth and credibility.

Facial expressions:

Smiling is a powerful cue that transmits:

Happiness Friendliness Warmth Liking Affiliation

Gestures:

If you fail to gesture while speaking, you may be perceived as boring, stiff and unanimated. A lively and animated teaching style captures students’ attention, makes the material more interesting, facilitates learning and provides a bit of entertainment.

Posture and body orientation:

You communicate numerous messages by the way you walk, talk, stand and sit. Standing erect, but not rigid, and leaning slightly forward communicates to students that you are approachable, receptive and friendly.

Proximity:

You should look for signals of discomfort caused by invading  space. Some of these are:

Rocking Leg swinging Tapping Gaze aversion

Paralinguistics:

This facet of nonverbal communication includes such vocal elements as:

Tone Pitch Rhythm Timbre Loudness Inflection

Humor:

Humor is often overlooked as a tool, and it is too often not encouraged . Laughter releases stress and tension. Obviously, adequate knowledge of the subject matter is crucial to your success; however, it’s not the only crucial element. Creating a climate that facilitates learning and retention demands good nonverbal and verbal skills. To improve your nonverbal skills, record your speaking on video tape. Then ask a colleague in communications to suggest refinements. 

For an individual, presentation skills are very important and especially when he is going to apply for a job. During the job interview, you have to present yourself as a sincere applicant who is always devotee towards the development of an organization with his or her technical and non-technical skills usage. That’s why, in high education like MBA Programs, MCA programs, an individual has to give presentation and this is the part of his studies. So many of us unable to give good presentation. There are ways that may help you in improving your presentation skills.

If you have good knowledge of your topic, your comfort level will be very high. In the presentation, the audience will look you as an expert. You should give them three key points to keep the audience interested. If you are a working person, then there is less opportunities for you to speak at work. So you should find many opportunities to talk in small meetings as a chance for practicing the presentation skills. You can also step up in church or civic group for presenting some information or be involved in committees or teams. There is a good chance for improve your skills. Every time when you speak, you should always ask somebody to give you feedback. You can ask from your trusted friend or colleague who give you true feedback about you. You should prepare yourself for the presentation by using appropriate visual aids. The most important thing for you is that your presentation should contain useful information which the audience really wants. For preparing effective presentation, you should take 3 to 5 cards and write down a key point on each one. If you have five points and above, then your talk is focused good enough. You can also write down the details that you need to cover on each card. Always remember one thing about presentation is that audience always remember only three things and so you need to focus on three key points. For the effective presentation, an individual should analyze himself and should identify his strengths.